What is statistics? Statistics is the mathematical science of the analysis of random data. In particular statistics uses knowledge about a sample of people to try to get knowledge about the whole population.

Statisticians:

design research experiments for scientists

design surveys for polls, businesses, and government agencies

analyze the resulting data.

Statisticians work in biology, economics, engineering, medicine, psychology, and education.

What is a problem a statistician might work on? To determine the size of the total audience for particular TV programs, statisticians will choose a sample of a few thousand families to ask, develop a survey questionnaire, set the sampling procedure, train the workers who collect the data, and analyze the data on the computer.

Who hires statisticians? Government agencies, drug companies, research organizations. Some statisticians work as consultants.